Lexical Engine and Platform (LEAP)

A powerful platform for language data

Our Lexical Engine and Platform (LEAP) is the cutting-edge technology that turns dictionary data into a powerful and sophisticated language resource.

LEAP takes language content and puts it through a series of transformations that enrich and link the data. The result is flexible and reusable content which can be used to explore relationships between words, concepts, and expressions within or between languages. The power of linked data is that it can suggest or imply new links which were not previously explicit. As a result, new languages can be connected, and information belonging to one language can inform another.

Powering our content

LEAP is the engine behind our dictionary websites on oxforddictionaries.com but its content is also served up through public APIs, making it available to developers and licensees around the world in whatever format they need to use it in their own apps, websites, and other technologies.

Our teams of lexicographers are constantly enhancing LEAP’s dictionary data. For some languages we enrich our data with user-generated translations and example sentences.

Because our data is linked, we can augment it with material from many separate sources, enabling us to create rich datasets that can handle the complex demands of natural language processing, information retrieval, and word-sense disambiguation.

The Oxford Global Languages (OGL) programme offers access to data in languages such as isiZulu and Malay that, despite being spoken by millions of people, have not had a significant digital presence until now.

What do we offer developers?

We offer easy access to our growing dictionary data in multiple languages via the Oxford Dictionaries API. Developers can extract the data they need to enhance their apps and websites with, for example, translations for a language-learning app, definitions for a spellcheck tool, or word-lists for brain-training games.

We also use advanced algorithms to provide natural language processing, machine learning, and other cutting-edge techniques to improve search, navigation, and discovery.